Those We Let Go
by Cantankerous Fairy
Summary: After the war, Harry accidentally meets two old friends from before his wizarding days, and suddenly his world takes a 180 degree turn as he goes for the ride of his life with these two miraculously complex wallflowers. But when Harry's world threatens his friends, can he save them from the remnants of Voldemort's followers? "I'll never let go. Not ever." HarryxOC. Het. LEMONS.


"I'm sorry, Harry. But I really just can't handle this right now."

And then Ginny closed the door in his face, her eyes still red and puffed from all the crying she had been doing. The loss of Fred was hitting the Weasleys incredibly hard, and Harry understood that, but that didn't stop Ron from pursuing Hermione, so it pained him that it stopped Ginny from accepting his love.

Yet, there was not much he could do. He just wished she wouldn't be so two-faced about it all. Ever since the war had ended, Harry and Ginny had been having a sort of on-and-off relationship with one another. Some days she would see him and kiss him and hold his hand and tell him how much she loved him. Other days, it ended up like this: Ginny would tell him to go away and shut the door in his face. He didn't quite enjoy the mixed signals, and very frankly, they confused the bloody hell out of him.

He sighed deeply, taking in a breath of the fresh, nighttime June air. It smelled like wet grass and old wood, which was actually a pleasurable scent that he had come to love while spending half his summers at the Burrow. In recent years, he had somehow always ended up at the Burrow during the summer, and he would be welcomed with open arms and half a dozen bacon sandwiches. He liked it very much, because it was about a million times more than what the Dursleys had ever given him.

Harry looked down at the bouquet of flowers he had brought for Ginny ― a dozen red roses, occasionally splotched with tiny white daisies. He left the bouquet of flowers at the foot of the door, hoping Ginny would find them later, and then Disapparated from the front door of the Burrow.

In London, Harry ended up on a dark street corner about six blocks from the flat he had been renting for the past month, just because the night was still young and he didn't want to go home and be all alone…again. As Harry walked down the surprisingly still street, he thrust his hands into the pockets of his jeans and contemplated what had happened over the last month:

Voldemort was long gone, and everyone but Harry was falling in love.

He was even sure that he was starting to fall out of love with Ginny.

In fact, he was positive that she was starting to fall out of love with him, too. It made him sad to think about it, because he had really liked Ginny. She had always been there for whatever Harry needed her for. Ginny cheered for him in the Triwizard Tournament; joined up with Dumbledore's Army; hid his potions book from him in the Room of Requirement; flew fiercely on the Quidditch pitch; and, like a true Gryffindor, fought courageously at the battle at Hogwarts no more than a month ago.

She was, indeed, brilliant. But Harry was sure that there was not much more he could do. Of course, that would be great relief for his best mate Ron, who, as Ginny's older brother, had always been a bit wary about Harry, or any boy for that matter, dating his little sister. Speaking of Ron, he had gone off with Hermione to Australia to look for her parents. Until they found them, Harry was going to be without his best mates.

Completely lost in contemplation, Harry hadn't realized that he had been wandering London for almost an hour, and he had no idea where he was. He looked back down the street, trying to figure out where he had gone, but he really had no idea. Looking back forward, Harry briskly walked up to the intersection at the corner ahead.

Across the way, there was a park, and the whole street was bustling with people. Harry concluded that he had somehow wandered into the heart of London without even knowing it.

Cars stopped at the stoplight and Harry was able to cross, along with a small crowd of others. Harry turned right on the corner and followed the long path of shops and clubs. Up ahead was a newsstand, and Harry stopped to read the headlines that were draped out front:

**PM Tony Blair Talks**

**Sending Troops to Iraq**

"_Great,"_ Harry thought, _"Just what I need to see…another war." _Upon closer thought as he stood reading the headlines, Harry realized that he had no idea who Tony Blair was. Harry picked up one of the papers from the news rack and skimmed through it, half-expecting the pictures to move.

Harry decided that on that night, he wanted to say in the Muggle world. Sure, it wasn't as exciting as Apparating to the Leaky Cauldron and spending the night chatting away and drinking Butterbeer with its magical customers, but there was something that made him want to explore the computerized civilization he had spent so long trying to get out of. Putting the paper back on the rack, Harry walked up the street along the store fronts. Now that he no longer lived with the Dursleys and was of legal age in both the Muggle and the Wizarding worlds, he could pretty much do whatever he wanted to.

So why not crash a random dance party?

Well, it wasn't _totally_ random.

Harry stopped, reading grey banner above the entrance of the slightly formal club, its deep red double doors open for people to enter. Harry recognized the name of the school on the banner, and he recognized the Muggle phrase "GCSE". The banner read:

**Congratulations Stonewall High Students**

**End of the GCSEs Dance**

Stonewall High was the secondary school Harry was supposed to go to if he had never received his letter of acceptance from Hogwarts, and thank Merlin he did! Harry could still remember the smell that came from the dye Aunt Petunia had been using to color some of Dudley's old clothes to be Harry's school uniform. He cringed slightly at the memory.

The double doors of the dance club were wide open to the night air, so really anyone could have entered, but only semi-formally dressed teenagers went in, all laughing and cheering; holding hands and linking arms. Harry just stood by, debating on whether he should go in or not. He had recalled that some of his peers from primary school had attended Stonewall High. If he was correct, then if he wasn't a wizard, he should have been attending that party, too.

As another group of excited teenagers went inside, Harry took the liberty of peering inside the open doors. He hadn't recognized anyone thus far, but maybe if he got a better look at those already inside, he would be able to see a familiar, yet aged, face. Not that Harry had many people from his non-wizarding school days that he wanted to see again, but somehow he had this overwhelming desire to see how some were fairing.

"_Maybe I could go inside…. I mean, it's not like anyone's stopping me…,"_ Harry thought, trying to work up a bit of stomach to go up the three stone steps and into the dance club.

Slowly, he started to make his way up the steps, holding onto the gold plaited railing that divided the middle of the steps. At the top of the three steps, Harry took a breath of outside air, and then walked right into the almost-darkness of the dance, passing dressed up people with drinks in their hands. No one seemed to notice he was even there.

Before him was a wooden dance floor that was packed with people his age, dancing and jumping to the music. All the ceiling lights were off, and a ridiculous amount of strobe lights lit up the dance floor, creating the effect that everyone was moving as if they were a flipbook of pictures. The dance floor was a fairly large size, with a DJ at the head of it all. Dinner tables draped in white cloths surrounded the dance floor, and each table had a candle in the center, burning from inside a glass case. Harry sort of shuffled to the side, lingering close to the first table he saw and grabbed ahold of the back of a chair, taking in the scene.

"_Maybe they're celebrating the end of the war, too,"_ Harry mused in his head. One month on and the Wizarding world was _still_ celebrating the defeat of Voldemort and his Death Eaters. The Leaky Cauldron was packed every night with witches and wizards dancing on tables to music played by instruments enchanted to play themselves and downing as much butterbeer and Firewhiskey as humanly possible. Every time he walked through the door, there would immediately be a dozen or so witches and wizards swarming him, asking to buy him drinks, and then buying them for him even when he declined.

Looking out at the sea of dancing teens, Harry noticed a gap towards the far corner of the dance floor, and the crowd of people between him and that gap was thin enough that he was able to see that there were only two people in that gap, but no one seemed to be paying them any heed. It was a boy and a girl, and they were dancing much more wildly than the others around them, yet they were laughing and enjoying themselves like they were the only people there.

Harry's eyes became drawn to those two in particular as the song changed, now at an even pace, which was a bit on the slower side from the last song, but those two in the middle just wouldn't slow down. They had built their own world in the corner of the dance floor, and just let everyone else move around it. Out of all the faces in the dance club, those two seemed to be the only ones familiar to him. The girl had short, light brown hair, which was only just no longer than a boy's cut. There was a bright smile plastered on her crimson red lips, and she looked rather plain in her maroon spaghetti strapped dress and crème flats. The boy was tall, but maybe it only seemed that way because the girl was rather short. He had a long nose and small eyes, with curly dark hair. He wore an all-out tuxedo, with brand new, bright red converse sneakers and a cashmere scarf draped around his shoulders.

The curious wizard shuffled towards their corner of the dance floor where the two were now doing a sort of 1920's American swing to _Karma Chameleon_, a popular American song from the 80's that had taken off in the UK charts just a few years back. Sometimes it would play on the record player in the Gryffindor common room.

When Harry came into view of the dancing pair, the boy hand just spun the girl, and she was stopping herself from becoming too dizzy. Harry hung back in the darkness, but the pair wasn't easily fooled. Their faces lit up in excitement and they both gestured for him to come out to the dance floor to where they had slowed their dance, only to invite him over. Harry gave a wary smile. In full awareness that he was a shit dancer, Harry coached himself over to the pair.

As soon as he had stepped within two feet of them, they grabbed him.


End file.
